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Collision course over Crimea

By Steven Lee Myers, David M. Herszenhorn and Rick GladstoneNew York Times

Posted:
03/07/2014 12:01:00 AM CST

Updated:
03/07/2014 11:05:24 PM CST

MOSCOW -- Russia signaled for the first time Friday that it was prepared to annex Ukraine's Crimea region, significantly intensifying its confrontation with the West over the political crisis in Ukraine.

The move threatened to undermine a system of respect for national boundaries that has helped keep the peace in Europe and elsewhere for decades.

Leaders of both houses of Russia's parliament said they would support a vote by Crimeans to break away from Ukraine and become a region of the Russian Federation, ignoring sanction threats and warnings, from the United States and other countries, that a vote for secession would violate Ukraine's constitution and international law.

The Russian message was yet another in a series of political and military actions undertaken over the past week that outraged the West, even while the Kremlin's final intentions remained unclear.

As fresh tensions flared between Russian and Ukrainian forces in Crimea, the moves by Russia raised the specter of a protracted conflict over the status of the region, which Russian forces occupied last weekend, calling into question not only Russia's relations with the West but also post-Cold War agreements on the sovereignty of the nations that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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Earlier this week, President Vladimir Putin of Russia had said he did not foresee the possibility of the Crimean Peninsula becoming part of Russia, but on Friday, Russia's parliamentary leaders, both strong allies of Putin's, welcomed a delegation from Crimea's regional assembly and declared that they would support a vote to break away from Ukraine, now scheduled for March 16.

The referendum has been denounced by the fledgling national government in Kiev, which said it would invalidate the outcome and dissolve the Crimean parliament. President Barack Obama has also rejected the referendum, and the U.S. government announced sanctions Thursday in response to Russia's de facto military occupation.

Russia denounced those sanctions in a blunt rejoinder Friday, posted on the Foreign Ministry website. The statement said Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, had spoken by telephone with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and warned that "hasty and ill-considered steps" to impose sanctions on Russian officials "would inevitably backfire on the United States itself."

The Russians also sent menacing economic signals to the financially strapped interim central government in Kiev, which Russia has refused to recognize. Gazprom, the Russian natural gas monopoly, which supplies Ukraine with most of its gas, warned it might shut off supplies unless Ukraine paid $1.89 billion owed to the company.

Gazprom cut off gas to Ukraine for nearly two weeks in January 2009, causing severe economic problems for Ukraine and for other European customers who were dependent on supplies delivered through Ukraine.

Valentina Matviyenko, chairwoman of the upper house of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, compared the referendum in Crimea to Scotland's scheduled vote on whether to become independent from Britain.

She did not mention that Britain had agreed to hold a referendum, while the Ukrainian government has not.

The speaker of the Russian lower house, Sergei Naryshkin, echoed Matviyenko's remarks. "We will respect the historic choice of the people of Crimea," he said.

Their assertions came a day after Crimea's regional assembly voted in a closed session to secede from Ukraine and apply to join the Russian Federation, and to hold a referendum for voters in the region to ratify the decision.

On Friday, a delegation of lawmakers from Crimea arrived in Moscow to lay the groundwork for joining Russia, strongly supported by senior lawmakers.

In another sign of Russian government support, the Crimean delegates were cheered at an officially sanctioned rally in Moscow that was shown at length on Russian state television. Police said 60,000 people attended.

Even if the referendum proceeds, it was unclear what would happen next, given the wide gap between the positions of Russia and the West -- most notably between Putin and Obama, who spoke for an hour by phone Thursday night.

According to the White House, Obama urged Putin to authorize direct talks with Ukraine's new government, permit the entry of international monitors and return his forces to the bases that Russia leases in Crimea.

Obama also spoke by phone to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, which has been reluctant to pursue muscular sanctions against Russia because of the deep and interwoven economic relationship between the two countries.

He traveled to Florida for an education speech and a weekend off with his family, but aides promised that he would be monitoring the crisis.

There was no sign Friday that Russian armed forces were relaxing their tight clench on the Crimean Peninsula, with military bases surrounded and border crossings under strict control.

There were news reports late Friday that pro-Russian militants had smashed through the gates of a Ukrainian air force base in the port of Sevastopol housing 100 Ukrainian troops, but that no shots had been fired.